Bishop Nazir Ali Risks Doing The BNP’s Work For Them

The National Secular Society has called on the Archbishop of Canterbury to discipline the Bishop of Rochester for his recent remarks about the supposed moral vacuum in Britain being filled by Islam.

Terry Sanderson, President of the NSS said: “Bishop Nazir Ali’s remarks are ill-advised, dangerous and manipulative. He is playing a very dangerous game with these repeated scaremongering tactics against Muslims, and risks doing the BNP’s work for them. He risks creating even more hostility towards the Muslim community in this country – and community relations are already very fragile in some places.”

Mr Sanderson said that the Archbishop of Canterbury should discipline him and prevent him from making further inflammatory statements.

“Rowan Williams assures us that interfaith relations are possible – but Bishop Nazir Ali obviously thinks otherwise. His recent remarks about converting Muslims obviously shows how little respect he has for other religions. His pronouncements are not helping to further the cohesion that the Government wants.”

Mr Sanderson said that the Bishop’s remarks about a ‘moral vacuum’ were also self-serving. “We don’t see that religion has the answer to any of the problems in society today. Mr Nazir Ali’s analysis is simply wide of the mark. The self-serving subtext seems to be to push people into declaring themselves Christians, when in other circumstances they would be indifferent.”

29 May 2008